ATLAS e-News
23 February 2011
11 December 2007
Maarit White
Nationality: Finnish
Maarit White in her famous pink coveralls
It is something unusual to see a woman-engineer in pink coveralls giving instructions around. But down into the ATLAS pit, this is a matter of routine. Our main protagonist is Maarit White, the Finnish engineer who among many other installation tasks has been in charge of supervising the scaffolding. She has become a sort of an icon among her co-workers, who know her as 'the pink engineer’.
Maarit is not only an overseer, she was also in charge of putting up the scaffolding that supports the construction of the ALTAS detector. Without the scaffolding to provide accesses to key but hidden areas, it would be just impossible to build such a gigantic device.
She says the most enjoyable aspect of the ATLAS collaboration is working with a variety of fantastic people from different backgrounds – engineers, physicists, technicians, crane drivers: “Just being with them and knowing we are all working towards the same goal.” In the construction of ATLAS, as Maarit says, one way or another everything is solved with the common effort.
Her long affair with CERN started in 1993, when she came over as a summer student while studying Mechanical Engineering at the Helsinki University of Technology. In 1994, she came again to do her Masters thesis. This second visit had a happy secondary effect, as she met her husband, the Canadian physicist John White, currently working on the GRID project.
Soon after meeting each other, Maarit went to live in Canada with John and there, started her PhD in materials fatigue. In 1999, both were back at CERN. She was still doing her PhD remotely, but not long before submitting her thesis, she decided to quit. “I said “no”,’ she remembers. “I didn’t want to get deeper into the academic role. I wanted to do engineering stuff.”
The engineering world though, does not look the easiest scenario for a woman. But Maarit’s experience working for ATLAS proves otherwise. “It is a bit of an advantage, everybody remembers your name, “she laughs. “I don’t think it matters that I’m a woman here. I’m treated as one of the qualified people. I’m quite demanding, I want things to happen right now, and it seems to make people happy that I come and do my job well.”
Maarit's remarkable presence has not passed unnoticed even among VIP visits to the cavern. “A women working here, and doing this kind of job. She must be strong and have lots of influences,” the Pakistani Atomic Energy Minister said after learning about Maarit’s presence. She laughs when remembering how the Pakistani engineers and technicians were always so taken by her presence and, as a compliment, they used to say: “She is not a woman, he is a man.”
- You can watch a short video of Maarit on a crawl through the ATLAS detector, for the benefit of ATLAS members who haven't had the opportunity to see the detector from the inside.
